Several months ago, I was laid off from my job at the International House of Prayer that I had been working at since I first started the Forerunner School of Ministry. In a way, it was fitting to finish the job at the same time I graduated from FSM, but it began many drastic life changes all at the same time. Within the span of about two months, I:
- moved into my own apartment for the first time
- graduated from the school I had been at for four years
- left IHOP-KC staff
- got married and became Becky Hartke
- got hired full time as a shift lead at a Target Superstore (my first non-ministry-oriented job since I worked at Cold Stone Creamery, which was when I was 16 years old)
- found out I was pregnant
If this doesn’t sound traumatic to you, it should. It was. Now, I have always been a cynic that mocked my own pain and said, “You don’t know what suffering is. Try to go live in India as an untouchable for 30 years or maybe sell yourself into the sex trade, and then maybe after you’ve gone through that you can tell me what it’s like to suffer.” Yes, I have never been very compassionate for “American suffering”, but going through these past few months has been one of the most trying experiences of my easy little life.
However, I have also been told that it’s useless to go through pain without learning something from it (we have such a fable-driven culture, don’t we?), so I have tried with all my might to find the moral in the midst of my own story. One quote that has stuck with me in this time is by Winston Chruchill,
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
I love this quote because it is so unassuming: it does not offer a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it does not say that every rocky path is the noble one, yet it calls for endurance through the depths. When there truly is no silver lining and the clouds simply will not stop pouring down rain, it is not helpful to say, “It’s only a season.”
I think what I have learned, more than anything, is that I am not Wonder Woman, and that is godly. It’s righteous to need my husband when I’m overwhelmed with morning sickness, to only take as much in my schedule as I can handle while being a sane person, to ask my friends for help when I can’t do something by myself, and alltogether to need people other than Jesus. The Lord did not create us to be Him. He made us have to depend on one another for things as an expression of godly love. It doesn’t just take love to give, it takes love to recieve. If it’s not clear what I mean by this, please feel free to say so and I will try to elaborate, but for now that’s the best way I can express what I’m thinking.
The other thing that I have learned is that life is not simply a series of random events that overtake individuals in the night. We choose our paths by our actions. Though it may seem like we have little control over what happens to us, and though to some degree that is true, we can change the course of the river of our life by a single stone of decision strategically placed in the path. That’s one reason why we must be in constant dialog with the Lord about what we’re doing in life–we’re not smart enough to know which stones will count and which ones will be for naught.
Now, let me clarify something at the end of this post that I maybe should have said earlier. I am not at all disappointed with the course my life has taken recently. Though it’s been more changes at once than one person alone can handle, they are all wonderful advances in my life that I’m exhilerated at the thought of. I mean, I have an amazing new husband, a wonderful new place to live, and a baby on the way!
The one major thorn in my side has been Target. It is a great company, and I would reccomend it as a workplace for anyone looking to have a steady, fair, and enjoyable job, but it is not what I want to spend my energies on. I took the job because I am committed to have financial integrity before the Lord, as Paul says, “if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Therefore, working at Target has equaled righteousness in this season, but it is not what the Lord has ultimately called me to and that has been difficult. Sometimes following Jesus means taking the long way around and sometimes life sucks when you’re not on the fast track, and I think that’s the last moral I have sapped from this story. Hope you liked it.
Recently, I have been wrestling with the fact that the idea and image of Jesus Christ that is currently in the Western Church is quite unlike the Jesus that was born in Bethlehem, Israel 2000 years ago. He has become an icon of whatever we want Him to be: world peace, financial stability, human rights, traditionalism, cultural relevance, hope of paradise, bedrock of emotional comfort, head of the non-profit organization, enlister for a missionary army, happiness, fundamentalism, and ultimately the person who empowers you to pursue whatever life endeavor you have (as long as it is morally acceptable). Within the group of actual Christians in the western Church (which I am broadly defining as those who profess Jesus as the resurrected Lord, truly human and truly God), there are so many varied opinions of who this Man is, what He stands for, and what He requires of us today—who can really know which voice is authoritative? Each of them claim to be Biblically and historically based, but with so many varying opinions, someone has to be wrong. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4:6 that “the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God [is] in the face of Christ,” but can we really know what that face is? Every face that is drawn cannot be accurate to history, but how can we know which ones are true and which ones are false? How can we know Him?
I would like to present that this cannot be done simply through intellectual analysis, historical study, careful exegesis, or an in-depth study of Christology. These are all very necessary, and if we had more interest in the subject of Jesus Christ in the West, much confusion would be dispelled without much effort. Yet with all of these tools, many have still sculpted quite different images of Jesus. In my own journey, I have realized the gravity of the question our Lord asked Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” and how my every choice, pursuit, and conviction rests in its hands. How I answer that question dictates how I answer every other question in life. Therefore, in my pursuit to know the true answer, I have been discouraged to find that those who are supposed to know Him most in modernity give polar opposite descriptions of Him. Oh, of course any group of people will describe an individual with an assortment of emphasized characteristics, but if the pastor says He will judge no seeker, the preacher says He’ll judge those who don’t repent, and the nun says He’ll judge all for the sanctification of their souls, someone has to be wrong. Who is Jesus? How can I know Him?
The endeavor of this post is not to give a comprehensive epistemological approach to theology, but to highlight two aspects that I have seen quite overlooked and de-emphasized in modern-day theology: the Holy Spirit and the pursuit of righteousness.
“But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment… I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you.” John 16:7-8, 12-14
Again and again throughout the New Testament, the point is stated that our surety is not to rest solely on the power of our feeble minds to deduct the truth from sterile facts, but on the faithfulness of the presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. If He began the story, it is His right to finish it. Too often, it seems as though scholarship today is trying to remove the living Person from the equation and get to the “bare bones” truth, as though truth were some list of words written on a paper instead of incarnate God breathing in flesh and bones. Brilliantly, slyly, He has bound us to Himself if we desire to know Him. The desire to strip theology of God is an ironic twist to the story that has led to a tragic fate. While most will not explicitly denounce the Holy Spirit’s involvement in the pursuit of theology, they simply do not implement it. He is not invited in as a real study partner (as hokey as that may sound), but rather left on the shelf in prayerless theology.
Likewise, righteousness is not seen as a qualification to brilliant scholarship. Yet, what does the Scripture say?
“He leads the humble in justice, And He teaches the humble His way… Who is the man who fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way he should choose… The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant.” Psalm 25:9, 12, 14
Though study cannot be replaced by holy living and prayer, the two must go hand-in-hand if truth is to be known because, again, truth is a Person not a set of ideas. He will only be known by those who want to know Him on His terms: humility and righteousness.
The reason I am writing this post is quite selfishly motivated, so if you didn’t get anything out of it, I apologize. I simply have to have confidence that I can know Jesus in reality if I am attempting to live for Him, and I have felt that being shaken as of late. I cannot live for a phantom. Biblically, I can have confidence that I am truly worshipping the resurrected Lord and not some figment of my hopeful imagination, as long as I am pursuing the knowledge of Him relationally and blamelessly. Now, of course both of those subjects can open up a whole set of questions in themselves, but I won’t begin to attempt to touch those at present.
There are so many blogs out there it makes me almost want to vomit when I log on to WordPress and see the daily summary from across the world wide web. It makes me feel my utter insignficance and absolute obscurity. Why am I adding my voice to this absurd din of words coming out of the mundane lives of everyday Joe?
Because I have something to say.
